“You kept him alive,” she says finally, and there’s relief there she tries to hide and fails. “You could have?—”
“I didn’t,” I say. “Because I may need him tomorrow.” I let the next piece come out where it can be seen because I can feel the question forming in her mouth. “Also, because if I killed him, I’d have to tell you, and I’m too greedy for the way you’re still looking at me right now.”
She swallows. The muscle leaps in her throat, and my hands want to stroke it. “That’s not fair,” she says, and she’s right. “You can’t do awful things and then use my feelings as your defense.”
“No,” I say. “I can’t. But I can tell you the truth about why I didn’t. You asked for the details,dikaya koshka.Sometimes that’s the part where I’m worse than you want me to be.”
She crosses her arms over her chest, lifts her chin. “Tell me everything,” she orders. “All of it. Don’t make me imagine worse.”
So, I do. Quietly and concisely, because she asked for the truth.
I give her Kyle’s loss of his stupid patch and the smell of mildew on the tarp. I give her Reed and his upside-down magazine. I give her Greene Street and the cold storage with its carrots and lettuce hiding rifles. I give her the way the pliers felt in my hand without the noise of breaking that would last longer than it needs to. I give her the way the chair bolt sang when I hit it with the mallet instead of a kneecap. Then the sound of his screams when it didn’t miss his knee.
Alina holds it all. She doesn’t drop a single detail. When I’m nearly finished, she exhales like she’s been asked to lift a weight and discovered she can.
“You’re going to go after the rest of those guns,” she says.
“Yes. Tonight or tomorrow, possibly,” I say. “First, we have to deal with your brother.”
“Right,” she whispers.
“He’ll cough up the money he has in a parking garage. Petrov will let him think he can drop it and run. Then he’ll count it. And if it’s not two million, then it’s a number he’ll have to turn into names.”
“He won’t have it all,” she says, voice raw.
“I know,” I agree. “He doesn’t need to have all of it to get to keep breathing. He needs to have enough to make me believe he’s finally a man who takes your wellbeing seriously.”
It’s a split-second decision, but I don’t tell her about Archer’s regular monthly meetings with Popeye. Timing matters, and now isn’t the right moment to put this truth on her plate.
I’m not lying, though, when I tell her he’ll live for now. Archer just won’t be free to roam where he wants any longer without us knowing where to find him whenever we want to.
Between Alina and Gavriil, deciding Archer’s fate is starting to feel like I’m getting fucked between a rock and a hard place.
She closes her eyes. When she opens them again, they’re bright but not wet. They lift, hover, and settle on the place my bandage lives under my shirt.
“You can’t kill him, Dom,” she says, and the request lands where she knows it will hurt. “If he fails. You can’t.”
“If it’s a choice between him or you, I will not choose him.”
It occurs to me that the “him” I’m referring to isn’t just Archer now. It hasn’t been since the moment I dragged Alina off the street, kicking and screaming for him while she busted my nose. I didn’t know then that she would become the closest thing I’ve ever had to an answered prayer.
Alina’s throat works again. “That wasn’t the question.”
“I know,” I say. I pull myself out of the chair to go sit beside her on the bed, my bed, and cover her hand with mine. “I won’t make any promises I can’t keep.” I swallow the rest of it, about not lying. “I’ll try to figure out a way for Archer to leave the city alive. I’ll pay for his getaway myself if I have to. But I won’t let you pay for it. You aren’t something I trade.”
Her breath comes out in a small, almost-laugh, broken and grateful and furious. “You’re impossible,” she says.
“I can’t promise you I’ll change either,” I reply as I gently cup her cheek, feeling her lean into my touch. Good. I want her to gravitate to me.
“Maybe I don’t want you to,” Alina murmurs as her eyes meet mine.
I forget how to breathe for a few seconds as I gaze at her, seeing the honesty in her eyes. The fact that she would take me as I am makes me want her even more.
“I can’t wait to fully heal,” I say as my thumb grazes her bottom lip, making her breath hitch.
“So you can touch me again?” Alina asks.
“Fuck, I just want to hold you,” I admit.
